Vester Flanagan, who goes by "Bryce Williams" on Twitter and Facebook, sent five tweets more than four hours after Alison Park, 24, and Adam Ward, 27, were shot dead during the report for WDBJ7, the local CBS affiliate. One tweet directed people to view the video on Facebook. Another contained the video itself.

The video is shot from the gunman's perspective, almost as if it were a first-person-shooter video game. In it, a man now all but confirmed to be Flanagan walks up to the reporter's live shot and aims his black handgun at Parker while she interviews a woman, who has been identified as Vicki Gardner, executive director of the Smith Mountain Lake Regional Chamber of Commerce.

He continues to calmly point and aim his gun as Parker interviews Gardner while Ward films — all three of them oblivious to his presence just one or two feet away. He waits for several seconds, perhaps until the live broadcast begins, then fires two shots directly at the reporter as she turns and runs away screaming. The video then goes black as more gunshots are heard.

Just before he posted the video, the account owner sent other tweets that hinted at a motive and accused at least one victim of racism.

Image: Twitter

"Alison made racist comments," he said, expressing shock that the news channel "hired her after that." He then said Ward "went to hr on me" after working with him.

Flanagan, who is black, was a former employee of WDBJ7, the station said. "About two years ago we had to separate him from the company," the station's general manager, Jeffrey A. Marks, told CNN. He said he couldn't remember any connection between Flanagan and the victims and wasn't sure whether they had overlapped at the station.

A photo that Flanagan uploaded to Twitter before the account was shut down.

"He did make some accusations against people some time ago," Marks said. "You can never imagine that somebody's going to come back and act on those issues."

Parker was once an intern at WDBJ7 before working there full-time.

Another of the gunman's tweets said "EEOC report filed," referring to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. That appeared to echo an incident from earlier in Flanagan's career. While working at NBC's affiliate in Tallahassee, Florida, in 2000, Flanagan complained to labor authorities and filed a federal lawsuit against his then-employers, alleging that his WTWC-TV bosses routinely called black employees — including himself — "monkeys" and made other racist comments.

Also on Wednesday, ABC News said it had received a 23-page fax after the shooting, apparently from Flanagan, and had turned it over to authorities.

In the document, the writer identifies himself as Bryce Williams, with the legal name of Vester Lee Flanagan II. Flanagan says the Charleston church shooting in June provoked his outrage, and cites other mass shootings in the U.S. as inspirations.

"What sent me over the top was the church shooting," Flanagan wrote. "My hollow point bullets have the victims' initials on them."

FLanagan also wrote that he was inspired by Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech student who killed 32 people in a mass shooting in April 2007.

"I was influenced by Seung-Hui Cho," he wrote. "That's my boy right there."

At one point, the letter writer calls his document a "Suicide Note for Friends and Family" and says he suffered racial discrimination, sexual harassment and bullying at work for being a gay black man.

"The church shooting was the tipping point… but my anger has been building steadily," he wrote. "I've been a human powder keg for a while… just waiting to go BOOM!!!!”

The Guardianobtained documents from Flanagan's time at WDBJ-7 that showed he had not only been reprimanded by superiors but that he had been told to seek medical assistance. The documents also detail several of his conflicts at the station which eventually led to his firing.

The Bryce Williams Twitter account, which was set up just last week, was suspended moments after the shooting video was posted. The Facebook account was suspended shortly thereafter.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe said earlier on Wednesday that the suspect was a "disgruntled employee" and police identified him as Flanagan shortly thereafter.

While an arrest was initially said to be "imminent" in the hours after the shooting, Flanagan appeared to be at large when the tweets were sent.

Less than an hour later, Virginia State Police spokeswoman Corinne Geller told WDBJ that Flanagan was in very critical condition, having shot himself on a highway more than three hours away from the scene of the shooting.

Flanagan died at a hospital at approximately 1:30 p.m., state police said.

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